What Your Facebook Account Says About Your Brain

It takes brainpower to win the social chess game.

Why do some people have thousands of friends on Facebook and others have just a few? It turns out that it depends on the size of their brain. A recent study found that people with more friends have a larger orbital prefrontal cortex, the region of the brain in your forehead right above your eyes. This brain region is involved in complex cognitive processes such as thinking about oneself and thinking about what other people might be thinking. Other recent studies found that people with larger social networks (including the number of friends on Facebook) also have a larger amygdala (a brain region involved in emotion regulation).

Establishing and maintaining many social relationships requires a great deal of brainpower. One must remember many names and faces, keep many individual memory files with information about what these people did in the past, and how and when they did it, constantly update information about the quality of the relationships with these people (are they still friends or have they become enemies?), keep track of the quality of the relationships some of these people have with one another (who is sleeping with whom, who is making alliances with whom), and try to predict what these people might do in the future. For humans and other primates that live in complex and highly competitive societies, having these social skills can make the difference between life and death, or between a good life and a bad one.

Take a primate species like the rhesus macaque for example. Rhesus macaques live in a competitive society in which the life of every individual is intertwined with the lives of many others into a thick web of intricate connections. Every move a rhesus macaque makes on the social chessboard has a domino effect on everybody else’s life, whether they like it or not. Rhesus macaques can’t afford to mind their own business. Being passive can be interpreted by others as an encouragement to exploitation. If rhesus macaques just want to be left alone, they must work hard at it. If their goal in life is not just to survive, but also to be successful, they must find a way to get others to work with them or for them. In a highly competitive society, having enemies is inevitable and, therefore, making friends becomes necessary for survival: individuals must cooperate with one another to compete against others. Living in a large and complex group generates many social problems and to solve these problems good social intelligence and high brainpower are necessary. The theory according to which the intelligence and the large brain that characterize humans, the other great apes, and some other primates evolved primarily to solve social problems is known as the Machiavellian Intelligence theory.

Consistent with this theory, previous studies comparing many different species of monkeys and apes showed that species that live in large social groups tend to have a larger brain, and particularly a larger prefrontal cortex (after controlling for differences in body size) than species that live in small groups. Rhesus macaques, baboons, chimpanzees, and humans are examples of these socially intelligent species with a large frontal cortex. It’s not that other primates are stupid, but they have different kinds of social organizations, and their social intelligence is probably adapted to their lifestyle and needs. Mountain gorillas, for example, live in small groups consisting of a large male and his harem of females and children. A successful male in mountain gorilla society is a strong and quiet type, and a successful female is one who can find such a guy and stick with him. These personality traits don’t encourage the nurturing of political ambitions. The lifestyle of the mountain gorilla would produce someone like King Kong, but not Machiavelli.

There is an interesting twist to the Machiavellian Intelligence theory of brain evolution. According to current primatological theories, whether or not primates live in groups is determined by females and their needs. If females are better off looking for food and avoiding predators on their own, then the species as a whole has a solitary lifestyle. If females need the help of males to raise their offspring, then the species lives in pairs or small family groups. Finally, if females need to cooperate with other females to find and defend their favorite food or to protect themselves from predators, then the species lives in groups. These groups will be large or small, again, depending on the females’ needs. Males have needs too, of course, and those needs are called females. There are some very brilliant minds among the scientists who study primate social evolution, and after decades of intellectual efforts and countless mathematical models, they have concluded that the contribution of males to the evolution of primate sociality is best summarized in the following statement: males go where the females are. So if the females are solitary, the males just follow them around, and if they live in groups with other females, males join those groups. Males’ primary goal in life is always one and the same: sex. Because males eat a lot of food, are potentially dangerous, and don’t help much with the kids, females of many primate species tolerate only a few males within their groups and expect them to make themselves useful by fighting predators and primates from other groups.

The interesting twist in the Machiavellian Intelligence theory is that the association between prefrontal cortex size and group size seen across many primate species is seen in the females and not the males. In other words, the more females that live in the company of other females, the larger the cortex of the species, whereas male group size does not correlate with cortex size. This interesting finding suggests that the evolution of complex intelligence in Old World monkeys and apes, including humans, may be due to the increasing complexity of female social life. In the evolutionary journey that led to big primate brains and complex intelligence, females and males traveled together and eventually reached the same destination, but females were the drivers and males were the passengers. Smart females produce smart kids, and some of them happen to be male. Males are genetically and anatomically similar to females, so as females became smarter, males – at least some of them - became smarter too.

"A recent study found that people with more friends have a larger orbital prefrontal cortex...Other recent studies found that people with larger social networks (including the number of friends on Facebook) also have a larger amygdala...."

That brain imaging studies lead to these ludicrous conclusions, and that Dr. Maestripieri takes them seriously, is evidence the entire field has, as we say in the States, jumped the shark.

How reliable is the new phrenology? See The dilemma of weak neuroimaging papers by computational neuroscientist Daniel Bor on his blog here http://www.danielbor.com/dilemma-weak-neuroimaging/

Researchers are seeing what they want to see in brain imaging studies.

From memory, skulls and brains are two different things. Phrenology is the study of the size and shape of the skull which is fixed and not malleable, this is about brain imaging studies. Brains are not fixed and are very malleable. At the moment it is all we have to go by. Also correlation is not causation it is just another article that needs more research study. Why is your linked data more credible than this article?

Sorry, but I know of a lot of people who have many Facebook friends and they're socially inept. It's like every person or the other is their friend, but friends without any depth or meaning. It would make more sense if the study were about people who generally have a larger pool of real friends and not 500 make believe friends.

What about this alternative conclusion: People who have more emotional regulation problem (hence supposedly are not really good at coping with emotional stuff and thus are supposed to have a smaller amygdala) need a larger social network to feel safe and secure, because they can't regulate their own emotion of sadness - needing something to recomfort them like perceiving themselves as not being alone and lonely. They ultimately do not have a "larger amygdala", in the sense that they do more complex cognitive processes which will be explained under.

Your claim about these people having a bigger amygdala and thus making more complex cognitive processes can be highly untrue, ESPECIALLY in this scenario. Since you are talking about people having more friends in facebook and having to make more complex cognitive processes, have you thought about them making non complex cognitive processes about people instead since they have so many things to think about? They would make these cognitive processes in quantity over quality, for example categorizing the people simply and not go in a deep and complex cognitive processes about people in general. Is that what "complex cognitive processes" mean for you?

Really, I would be inclined to agree with Altostrata... I think the field is heading in the wrong direction with those kind of biased and stupid conclusion.

I also read a study in science daily that said the more friends you have on facebook the more narcissistic you are. So are both true? One? Or none. I would have to see the paper since many of these studies are done poorly.

I agree with the narcissism assessment of people with high numbers of friends. The reality is that you can't have meaningful relationships with high numbers of people. Some people deliberately keep their networks small. After a certain point I did because, lets face it, you are giving away a lot of personal information to near strangers otherwise.

Even if there is truth to this study, I seriously hope this article isn't implying that introverts or people less concerned with socializing are less intelligent than more extroverted types.

Because that would clearly be ridiculous.

If (and I'm emphasizing if) a particular region of the brain is larger in some people, that doesn't necessarily indicate higher intelligence. It could indicate a greater amount of a different type of intelligence (social intelligence), but not everyone is as concerned with that (and many are too busy being smart in other ways).

I'm quite good with people in my daily environment and enjoy socializing in the right environments. I am not on Facebook and have no desire to use my precious time in cultivating a gaggle of online "friends", most of which I wouldn't want to spend time with in the real world. I am very bright, creative, and introverted and like to use my time learning, doing, and discovering.

I jump at the chance to socialize in the real world with people who share my intelligence, curiosity and love of learning. The people who spend hours every week on Facebook are unlikely to be the type of people I'd be spending time with.

I highly doubt that people with 1,000+ friends for example have that level of emotional intimacy or even knowledge of everyone on their friend list. A majority of those people friends probably aren't on Facebook regularly especially with the default feature of only showing status updates of friends someone communicates with most frequently. friendships on Facebook should not be compared to friendships in real life as the intimacy is not there and most interactions are very shallow.

Interesting article, but I really don't see how you can draw any significant conclusions about the brains of Facebook users from the number of "friends" we have on Facebook. I have 19 "friends" on Facebook, so my brain must be observable only under an electron microscope. Perhaps we have better things to do than spend all day glued to our laptops monitoring the every movement of myriad contacts on Facebook.

You conclude that females were in the driving seat without considering the many contributing factors going into intelligence. Such as the sexual selection theory: Men showing off art and skills to women (who need a big brain to appreciate these 'displays'). Any casual stroll through history will show men and women as equally intelligent, but men are much more likely to show off those skills by writing, painting, becoming rock-stars etc. Any male at the top of his field will have more sexual partners. To be the best at any of these intelligence displays requires a large brain. Voila male-guided evolution. Now I'm wrong of course, there are MANY contributing factors that led to intelligence, but it's a little too easy to say it was Men or it was Women.

I have a facebook account wth exactly 10 career contacts. That's it. i connect with my friends via texts and email.

It is not very intelligent to friend everyone you meet on facebook. Remember that future employers, and others who may have the power over your paycheck, might stumble upon your page and not like what they see.....

If you are friendly in mindset and share interesting articles, you might easily get many friends. I do agree about social life improving our brain. Social intelligence is as importnat as other type of intelligence. And if you dont have friends and do t want to spend time on internet- thats your choice. I have definitively found interesting ideas, pages and old schoolmates that was fun to see. Specially since i lived in 3 countries internet media helps me to keep in touch. I am also female, so maybe its normal. Btw its fun to see what your kids too also. I would never post anything there anyway that would make my employers to react. I have other foras to discuss details of more personal view and things..
I just checked today- I have Over 200 friends. I know whom they are, why i am connected to them and how they are doing. Close friends i think i have about 7. And family is a big part of contacts, they live different countries too. So yes - fb and similars are there to stay. Narcissism is also modern disease. But we all have some, if we are very honest. Even saying that you are too intelligent shows it. Lol

Facebook is big whole you can make many friends,but it depends on you that what you think about it,but i want to say one thing that if you have great status then you will have more friends so check these Facebook Status and feel happy